when the paradigm shifts, africa appears ... · yoruba aesthetic universe as well as the full range...

Journal of Art Historiography Number 18 June 2018

‘When the Paradigm Shifts, Africa Appears’: reconceptualizing

Yoruba art in space and time

Review of: Rowland Abiodun , Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in

African Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 409 pp., 73 b/w,

67 colour ill. $92 cloth.

Nkiru Nzegwu

Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art by Rowland Abiodun, John

C. Newton Professor of the History of Art and Black Studies at Amherst College, is

an epistemological tour de force on art and aesthetics from within a Yoruba

intellectual scheme. Writing in English though thinking in Yoruba, Abiodun

marshals the deliberative methodology of the Yoruba intellectual tradition that

historically comprised of leading purveyors of knowledge, such as the (rulers),

high-ranking chiefs, (town/community heads), Ògbóni elders as well as experts

of religion and health (aláwo, ), (historians), music, visual and verbal

art professionals, and (art experts). In conveying this knowledge, Abiodun

refrains from the conventional practice of epistemologically centering the West and

deploying the Western conceptual scheme and artistic vision, even as he carefully

reviews Western artistic practices and the writings of Western researchers and

commentators on Yoruba art. He is fully cognizant, as ,

th t Y ub ‘ gu g … th t h u f u c ’ (2008, 75), d d w

heavily on the language and his prodigious knowledge of the culture in this study

of Yoruba art.

Proceeding methodically, Abiodun theorizes Yoruba art after decades of

deepening his knowledge of Yoruba artistic histories and practices and grasping

their organizational logic.1 th d th t c c , , that works

1 Demonstration of competence in any field of studies is necessary in establishing the

g t m c f ’ k w dg c m d ch uth t . Th f d f Af c tud

has long been plagued by faulty reasoning that rests on Western intuitions rather than on

Af c ’ k w dg f u d t . It b h v u t c t th g u d f ch ’

uth t . Ab du ’ c d c t c tud f Y ub t d cu tu m t v t d b

desire to shift the study f Y ub t t Y ub cu tu g u d . tud f th

th t c u v , g v f t , b g t th I t tut f Af c tud t th

v t f If (later Obafemi Awolowo University). It consisted of reflections of lived

experie c , f d t bt d th ugh ch, c t c t g t f t t c

m d , t c t Y ub ch tud c mmu t t If d u d

the world, continuous engagement in, and reassessment of discourses on Yoruba ontology

and art with Yoruba and nonYoruba colleagues in different disciplines, formal presentations

of his research findings and ideas at scholarly venues, and focused publications on Yoruba

art and aesthetics. Prior to this period of sustained research, Abiodun, like most Western-

Nkiru Nzegwu ‘Wh th d gm h ft , Af c ’:

reconceptualizing Yoruba art in space and time

2

with the explicative Òwe (dramatic figures of speech), to illumine typologies of

verbal oríkì (praise or citation poetry2), proverbs, and chapters of Odù Ifá (Ch.1).

They analytically articulate and decompose Yoruba conception of creativity and art.

He utilizes ìtàn (a dynamic-discursive mode of historical practice [Yai 1993]) to

ground his theoretical framework. And for sociocultural adequacy, he draws on

Yoruba cosmogony, odes to the (divinities), àṣà or stylistic traditions of various

t w k , mb c m t f w Y ub th k d ch ’ f

cultural and artistic forms, including those of local and regional . Ab du ’

strategy of analytically drawing (wisdom) into the realm of (knowledge)

promotes òye (deep understanding) from a Yoruba art historical standpoint (2014,

27-32). He presents his culturally-grounded analyses to a global audience as if he

was in a Yoruba center of learning, deliberating with historically-informed peers

and demonstrating his explicatory and analytical competence.

Firmly situated within the Yoruba conceptual paradigm, Abiodun theorizes

the particularities of the Yoruba artistic tradition that translocal and transregional

communities of creators and intellectuals have developed over centuries. His book

embodies two main arguments: the first, speaks powerfully to the importance of

language of an t f ct’ culture in artistic understanding; and the second, speaks

un qu v c f th v c d t w f th c t ’ c c tu

schemes, aesthetic concepts, and metaphysical and social values in artistic

understanding. Both arguments are nuanced and deftly argued, delivering far more

explanatory illumination on Yoruba artistic forms and motifs, styles and àṣà, artistic

ct c , d c t v t th th b k’ ubt t m . C t t th

ubt t ’ m d t c m , Ab du t ‘ k g th Af c ,’ h m t fu

delivering an African artistic scheme through knowledgeably highlighting the

Yoruba aesthetic universe as well as the full range of artistic values, epistemological

insight, and cultural practices that make the art possible. Although working within

the Western knowledge system for most of his professional career, Abiodun

admirabl f f m th t d d m t k f u m g th W t’ t t c

traditions, periodizations, and philosophies of art onto the Yoruba. He understands

clearly that his task is not to further expand the hegemony of Western art and art

historical principles, but rather to reveal the long obscured Yoruba artistic logic and

aesthetic vision.

Abiodun consummately leads readers out of the Western aesthetic paradigm

educated African scholars of his time were relatively well-versed in their cultural practices,

but had spent more time formally studying, and becoming vastly educated on, Western

society and its practices at the expense of their own. At the end of his formal training in

Toronto, Canada, Abiodun recognized that his knowledge of Western art and foundational

aesthetics were ill-suited for analyzing Yoruba art. So, he shifted gears. 2 Forms of verbal oríkì include (targeted discourse), (dramatized satire), ewì (egúngún

chant), ìjálá, and -ìyàwó ( b d ’ m t). Ab du , 11-12.



3

and its attendant epistemological scheme. He then takes us deep into the Yoruba

intellectual arena where normative and meta-theoretical disputations on art, culture,

and aesthetics habitually take place. In that arena, Orí stands as the principle of

individuation, individuality and actualization, with Òwe, functioning as the process

of exemplification, and unravelling the intricate relations between artistic object and

ch, w b tw th ‘ ct v c k w ’ (20) and instances of

actual works of art concretized as physical oríkì. Òwe-reasoning is not simply the

unravelling of figures of speech as is generally assumed; in its deeper sense, it

t m tt ‘th ubj ct f d cu , c c ct ’ (26). Th

contemporary journey from Western citadels of learning to this thought-system

where art is visual oríkì and the knowledge produced has a long venerable history,

has been in progress for a long time. In fact, it began with the creation of African art

studies as an academic field in the West in the 1950s. Hitherto, theorists and

researchers of African art in Western citadels of learning (hereinafter referred to as

‘Af c t t h t ’ ‘Af c t ,3‘ h t) w W t -trained African

art scholars have aspired to do just that, but have always come up short. Just for this

breakthrough alone, Yoruba Art and Language is a monumental scholarly

accomplishment for African art studies in the West, succeeding where numerous

others have failed. Most importantly of all, it successfully wrested an African

th t c f m w k d cu tu ’ t f m th ticky metaphysics covering and

impaling it to the Western aesthetic system.

w g t th c m t f Ab du ’ Yoruba Art and Language, this extensive

review is conducted in four parts. The first part examines the issue of the relevant

language for generating meanings and comprehending Yoruba art; the second,

3 Th t m ‘Af c t’ m f t ch f Af c W t c d m f

learning who is non-native or nonAfrican. This means that the individual or their parents is

neither an African, nor has real life lived experience in some African country. This does not

mean that individual has never traveled to specific countries as a tourist or for research.

What essentially differentiates the Africanist from the African scholar is that the former by

virtue of belongingness to his or her own society and culture, has an externalist or outsider

perspective. The scholarship from such an ‘outsider perspective’ is only as good as the

duration of the visit, the close interaction with members of the society, the learning of the

language, the participation in and explanation of ceremonies, rites and rituals, the

seriousness to learn, what he or she was able to learn about the values, and the willingness to

live and interact with others by those values. The criteria seem like a tall order, but it is

necessary to enforce a paradigm shift, necessary for truly understanding and meaningfully

studying African cultures. In the absence of a paradigm shift, one is merely engaging African

societies from an externalist perspective that offers little of the logic of the culture. In fact,

dependence on such an externalist perspective for knowledge production is fundamentally

b m t c. Th b c u ’ wn cultural framework will continually intrude and

t f w th ’ ff t t u d t d g th cu tu . Th b m m g f d f th t

cultural framework is a hegemonic one.



4

highlights the appropriate conceptual scheme and orally-based historical tradition

that constitute the paradigm of knowledge; the third, draws attention to the

metaphysical traits of this paradigm providing intelligibility to Yoruba conception

of art as oríkì; and the last, illuminates the underlying logic of the chapters

presenting the Yoruba aesthetic universe in this book. The review concludes on

what readers should take away from this groundbreaking book.

The language of meaning: how did we get here?

Over fifty years after the formal end of colonialism in Nigeria, the issue of the

relevant language for understanding Yoruba art is still astoundingly being

discussed. That such a discussion is taking place at all demonstrates the enduring

power of coloniality and the shifting underlying character of colonial racism.4 By

‘c t ’, I mean, the interconnected political, social, and racial hierarchical

orders of power of European colonialism (Quijano 2000) that endures even in

tc t ; d b ‘c c m’, I mean a brand of racism that targets

cultures rather than bodies (Nzegwu 1999) and in the process propagates singularity

(Nzegwu 2016). Despite the commendable efforts of a band of intrepid Africanist

pioneers to carve out a field of African art studies in the West, and despite the

dedicated work of later scholars to produce a canon of literature, Yoruba Art and

Language makes a convincing case that these past efforts of the study of African art

in the Western academy and within the Western system of knowledge remains

entrapped in coloniality, exemplified by the massive failure to apprehend and

theorize Yoruba art and other cultures from within an African perspective.

Decades after the creation of the field of African studies, post-pioneer

Africanist art historians and Western-trained African scholars are still taking for

granted the centrality of Western languages, Western art historical principles,

Western art periodizations, Western artistic concepts, and Western-derived theories

in studying African art. The process assimilates African art into the Western artistic

scheme as if Yoruba creative expression accords wholly with Western aesthetics, but

places it at a lower creative level. Ab du ’ g u db k g b k ch g th

validity of this assimilationist philosophy and methodology. He focuses attention

particularly on the superficiality of interpretations, the nonapprehension of the

Yoruba conception of art, and the shortcomings of Western languages and

conceptual frameworks in understanding African artefacts. He raises fundamental

questions about what counts as knowledge in the field of African art studies in the

West, if African cultural logic is left out. He prods us to interrogate what constitutes

evidence when African cultural data do not register on a theoretical scheme and

4 ‘C c m’ is a terminology I utilized in discussing the character of racism in non-

settler colonies in Africa. See Nzegwu, 1999.



5

researchers do not understand the language and norms of the culture that produced

an artifact.

In the United States academy where the West defines the normative ground

f ch h f Af c t, th g t m c f Ab du ’ t u d m d b

an unwillingness to accord it legitimacy, by venturing outside the parameters of the

Western intellectual tradition and structure of knowledge. Instead, attention is

deflected from this unwillingness, by attacking the idea of an African intellectual

tradition, and the existence of African knowledge practices. These attacks are

carefully targeted at the features distinguishing the African mode of knowledge

production from the specific mode that is privileged in the West. With the latter

being represented as the only valid mode of knowledge, the Yoruba intellectual

tradition is disparaged for its presumed inferiority, lack of accuracy and difficulties

of recoverability of historical data. The underlying idea giving legitimacy to this

Western stance is that since Yoruba history is orally preserved and transmitted, the

accuracy of historical data is compromised by a methodology that collapses

multiple time frames, and a mode of knowledge that lacks critical reflection. An

ancillary component of the contention is that, because contemporary iterations of

languages differ from their earlier historical epochs, Yoruba words, ideas, and

meanings of past historical epochs are different from contemporary ones. Hence, on

this view, the possibility of obtaining accurate historical data is further amplified.

The envisaged problem here is that although an oríkì or oral testimony may deliver

historical information, the data lack epistemic value because they embody a

multiplicity of temporal moments with no definite chronological order. Therefore,

there is no valid theoretical way for sorting out, deciding on the correct temporal

sequence, or agreeing on the semantic accuracy of descriptions and claims of past

historical epochs.

It is worth noting that such sceptical attacks on oral history have

spearheaded the invalidation of African intellectual tradition and the ideas of

Af c t ctu ’ h t c t v . uch v d tion, in the face of the

groundbreaking work of Ibadan Historical School and African orature theorists,

continues furtively to promote the epistemic superiority of the Western system of

knowledge and its viewpoints about other cultures. The continued promotion

illegitimately reassures contemporary Westocentric Africanists and Africans about

the epistemic legitimacy of their approach. The upshot of this stance is that because

African societies putatively left no written records,5 the Western languages and the

5 I u th w d ‘ ut t v ’ b c u f th v v u um t th t Af c

society had a writing system, and so left written records. Of course, we know that the

assumption is false given that systems of writing existed in an array of societies from ancient

times in scripts such as, Proto-Saharan, Egyptian hieroglyphs (hieroglyphic, hieratic, and

d m t c), N b d , T f gh Am gh z, V , M t c, G ’ z Eth c, d Nubian, Roman,

Arabic, and others. The problem is that the archives of these system are either not known in



6

Western methodology are the sole intellectually appropriate medium for academic

work.

Isidore Okpewho, and countless oral literature and oral history experts,

successfully challenged such assumptions on the ground that epistemological

critiques of oral hi t d t tu d m t t ck f ‘ uff c t d

u d t d g f d f g f th d g u gu g ’ wh ch uch t tu

or knowledge is performed (1992, 12). The point being that lack of linguistic

c m t c f cu tu ’ guage does not imply nonexistence of a valid

information retrieval process and system in that culture. Subsequently, recurrent

interrogations of the epistemic validity of oral history and oral literature are driven

by vain searches for familiar writing systems and familiar modes of written

d cum t t , m tt th dub u tu f th d cum t d f th w t ’

interpretations. In constructing oral history as theoretically unsound, Westocentric

Africanists, that is, those steeped in white superiority, are invidiously choosing to

ignore the evidence and interpretations of indigenous cultural experts. However,

limiting knowledge practices only to the Western value-system and Western

epistemological standpoints falsely universalizes Western terminologies, objectives,

epistemology, and languages, and erroneously deems them present in the languages

of every culture in the world.6 The pseudo conceptual equivalence underwriting this

universalization fallaciously underwrites the interrogation and dismissal of Yoruba

language and thought as unnecessary for knowledge production. Yet, no legitimate

evidence exists to warrant the validity of the Western scepticism and the Western

archimedian standpoint on creativity, aesthetics, and artistic relationships that is

being implanted. Thus, the conventional practice of continually invoking Western

art principles, far from amplifying the superficiality of Yoruba art interpretations,

actually obfuscates the art, particularly the relationship between art and creative

expressiveness.

It is pertinent to underscore that knowledge in the West functions as a site

for the maintenance of white privilege and superiority. For this reason, politics

the West, or hardly acknowledged or utilized when known. The point is that what does not

register in the Western mode of knowledge does not exist! 6 Ab du ’ g f th d qu c d ch tu f E g h/W t t t c

terminologies in presenting the meaning of Yoruba artistic expression, occurred in 1982 after

h cc t d Ak wum I ’ v t t t t ch t h t Y ub gu ge in the

Department of African Languages at the University of Ife in I -If , now Obafemi Awolowo

University. This required him to give a semester long series of lectures in Yoruba, clarify

t , d t tud t ’ qu t , t m t Y ub , d v w tud t ’

work in Yoruba. Suddenly, the parochial nature of Western art assumptions, terminologies,

d d z t b c m fu bv u . Th W t’ ‘universality’ quickly dissipated,

revealing instead a range of ideas and viewpoints that make little sense within the Yoruba

artistic and epistemic standpoint (personal communication 2/18/2018).



7

rather than a genuine search for knowledge undergirds Western theorizing about

others societies. This politics of knowledge regulates the legitimization of African

studies in the Western citadels of learning in ways that evacuates the African and

African values, ethics and norms from view. What is African is routinely presented

from a deficit standpoint, slickly casting Africa as a place of inferiority and

illogicality.

Once the evacuation of African cultural reality and aesthetic scheme takes

place, white privilege and solipsism flourishes unchecked as Africanist art

historians freely rely on Western languages, archives, texts, voices, and intuitions as

well as on Western-centred artistic interpretations as though Africa and African

thinkers do not exist. Some of the archives and texts are seventeenth- to early

twentieth-centuries white European and white American travellers’ reports,

anthropological writings by colonial functionaries and white Christian missionaries,

and ethnocentric modern Western theories of art and psychology. By positioning

these racially-charged texts as vital for theoretical construction, many

fu d m t c t d ‘ m z d’ d b c m f u d t m t f

African studies. Africanist art historians are then empowered to blithely ignore the

flaws in those texts as well as the longstanding exhortations of African scholars and

philosophers that language is the repository of history, values, culture, concepts,

and all facets of human social production and is essential for cultural understanding

(Mũg 2012, Oyèláràn 2008, Wiredu 1996, Maathai 1995, Yai 1993, Okpewho 1992,

w Th g’ 1986, k 1977, ’B t k 1966). It t uct v th t th

exhortations on the importance of African languages and perspectives in explaining

African histories, cultural life, values, philosophies, and art continue to fall on deaf

, b c u , ch g g th cc u t f th W t’ k w dg b ut th

cultures, they threaten the very foundation of Western hegemonic power.

For perceptive scholars such as Abiodun, whilst it is important to establish

the causative factors behind the dismissal of African languages in artistic

interpretation, and to show that these factors rest on fallacious connections between

race and intelligence, it is far more useful to focus on the implications of the

dismissal on scholarship. The first effect, which Abiodun brings to attention, is the

epistemological and theoretical invalidity that follows the unwarranted elimination

of African history and social and cultural values in explanations; and the second, is

the corollary banishment of African subjectivity and ontology from intellectual

purview. Abiodun makes the case that working synergetically, both processes

replace Africa with nonAfrican artistic and aesthetic ideas. The switch, some of

wh ch ccu u t t u , b cu th f ct th t th W t’ t m g c

objective is not really to promote an understanding of African arts in accordance to

their artistic and aesthetic logic, but rather to recast the art and Africa in ways that

make them palatable to Western sensibilities and pretensions of cognitive

superiority. The inevitable refashioning of African art that follows, a signal to the



8

relations of power underlying coloniality, centres this colonially-manufactured,

beauty-b d, m d t t f Af c t ‘u b .’ It m t v t

t th t th ‘u b t ’ c m , t f m cu tu v d t g t m t , but

from claims that the Western system of knowledge is based uncompromisingly on

‘ ccu c ,’ ‘t uth,’ d ‘ bj ct v t .’

Putting aside all self-serving coloniality claims, a philosophical

understanding of hegemony falsifies this representation of Western knowledge

claims about other cultures. Its production of knowledge of other cultures is

fundamentally ideological designed to relationally amplify the inadequacy and

f t f th cu tu b d t u d m th ’ t uth b ut

th m v . Th uct c t t m g c v u th cu tu ’ cc u t f

themselves works dual harm by blocking the articulation of African philosophy and

c t g t d t ctu d f c t. Th , tu , c Af c ’ bj ct

to Western misconstruals and vests theoretical value on those misconstruals. This

strategy of erasure and accordance of epistemic pre-eminence to the West stems

from a long enduring racist legacy of coloniality widely believed to have been

ud t d. Th g c , wh ch h d u d d th f m u ‘ m t c th ’ d

‘ ud c t t h th ,’ h d m c ded to a presuppositional level from

whence it periodically re-emerges to shape the structures of Western academy. By

influencing academic disciplines, directing trajectories of research, and determining

what counts as scholarship on Africa, it portrays Afr c ’ t -colonial scholarship

as defective. Additionally, from its deep foundational level, its racialized

constructions of knowledge continually underwrite the idea that African cultures

lack a conception of art, that Africans lack rationality, and that Africans do not

th qu t t ctu d t c d c c t t ‘ bj ct v ’ d

‘k w dg b ’ th t.

Operating sub-textually within the Western intellectual scheme is a vast

corpus of racialized assumptions that limit knowledge only to white cognisors.

What white cognisors know, together with the writings of white colonial

functionaries, white Christian missionaries, and white adventurers and travellers

(who at the time of writing, were ill-informed about the salient logic of African

cultures) are elevated to canonical status. An unwavering faith in texts and

documents in this cognitive system translates into blind acceptance of erroneous

data, because scholarship is white, knowledge is scribal, and canonical texts are

produced b wh t ‘ t ’ d th f w Af c w g t v d t

coloniality. The global hegemony that secures white Western intellectual power

guarantees white Western dominance of theory and art history worldwide. It also

authorizes the construal of Africa as a tabula rasa, and undermines Africans

intelligence, imagination, and subjectivity. By tacitly making African languages

epistemologically redundant as well, this theoretical performance of hegemony

makes it pointless to epistemically value African philosophies of art and the artistic



9

interpretations that flow from them. This means that the only credible knowledge

about African art and African humanity is the one articulated by a white theorist.

With the Western modernist, beauty-based notion and tradition of art reigning

virtually unchallenged, Africanist art researchers are empowered to assert

definitional, theoretical, and publishing dominance over African art and aesthetics.

From within the Yoruba and other African intellectual schemes and artistic

u v , th u f c t f th wh t W t ‘k w dg ’ Af c

unbelievably glaring. It is astounding to local intellectuals that expertise and

theoretical dominance can be claimed by those who barely speak the language, and

whose purported und t d g f cu tu ’ t d t ctu t d t

ïv t b t. Th b c j ck g t f tt Af c ’ k w dg b ut th

cultures in order to promote theoretical hypotheses and the epistemic pre-eminence

of Africanists is beyond belief. Needless to say, the theoretical problems Africanists

typically raise about African art, the lack of historical accuracy of oral history, the

t m g c h tc m g f Af c ’ k w dg c , d th b c f

critical viewpoints, all register as either non-problems or pseudo-problems that are

symptomatic of ignorance. For this reason, the pronouncements about Yoruba art

and its history by anyone lacking linguistic and cultural fluency lack credence. Such

pronouncements are profoundly similar to a non- t t ’ c m t k w,

understand, and evaluate the scribal history of Western art simply by visually

perusing art catalogues and books.

It f t th t Ab du ’ gu g -matters argument re-asserts the

appropriate standard of scholarship, irrespective of which culture and which

artistic works are being studied. It is for this reason that Yoruba Art and Language

foundationally and intertextually attacks specious claim to knowledge7 as well as

the unwarranted problematization of Yoruba orally-b d h t . F t, Ab du ’

arguments perceptively addresses the fact that one cannot (know) or claim

knowledge of what one neither knows nor understands, by which he means the full

7 It is impossible to understand, let alone interpret artistic visions, motifs, meanings and

practices, if one does not understand the requisite language and lacks access to the

conceptual scheme of the culture under study. Because Western languages and artistic

principles do not offer any access to the Yoruba universe of meanings, the only available

access is indirectly through informants of various degrees of skills and competence. It is

noteworthy that most informants of researchers are not necessarily intellectuals of the

culture, or knowledgeable members of a professional artistic group, or knowledgeable about

Yoruba history and culture, or aware of the problems of para-literate feedback, or fluent in

th Af c t ch ’ W t gu g t u d t d th u c f h h ch,

or literate in the artistic theories and assumptions the Africanist researcher is deploying in

reading Yoruba visual art works. In fact, to avoid pitfalls in cross-cultural translation,

researchers really have to step outside the frame of coloniality to learn about the culture. In

short, they have to learn the requisite language themselves.



10

range of epistemic forms whereby data is encoded—such as forms of oríkì, ìtàn,

performance rites and ritual-narratives); and secondly, knowledge cannot be based

on an epistemology of ignorance and the mistaken interpretations that flow from it.

Hence, claims by Africanists to knowing Yoruba art and to knowing the defects of

Yoruba oral history are fundamentally false. The falsity lies in claiming to know

what they do not really know. This is because such claims, first, require linguistic

and cultural competence to ascertain how the methodological processes work; and

second, how cognitively the society marks time and chronology in its system of

knowledge. This is a complex matter that requires intimate knowledge of the

culture, and that cannot be ascertained a priori.8

C qu t , Af c t ’ u m t f Western periodization and

aesthetic formula on Yoruba art generates false, unproductive queries and artistic

concerns that are not the purview of Yoruba creativity and art. While, for instance,

such superimpositions lead Africanists to assume erroneously that visual beauty is

the overriding goal of all aesthetic schemes and the central features of all

conceptions of art as it is for modern Western aesthetics, the aesthetic rationale of

Yoruba art is obscured. Consider that when the focus is on visual beauty and is

d v b t f ‘ t t ’ th t c c tu ch m d

W t th t c , th g c f Y ub t k w d. ‘R t t ,’ m d

Western art, is semantically weighted toward similarity and realism and extols

beauty and imitation of observable physical reality.

By contrast, Abiodun shows over the course of the book, that this Western

meaning fails to capture an aesthetic logic oriented toward otherness, essences, and

departure from physical reality. He makes the case that it is exceedingly important

for researchers to acquire language competency and to gain cultural fluency. His

point, of course, is not that Africanists cannot know Yoruba art, but that Africanist

researchers validly cannot rely on a mode of visuality framed by Western ideas or

‘W t ,’ u f c u d t d g f Y ub cu tu t g th òwe-

driven mode of conceptual and historical analysis. Language and cultural

competence are essential for the deployment of òwe to gain (knowledge) of the

b t ct d tu c c t d d t d. Th b t t ‘ h d’

b t ct d , h t , c t d t v d m t m t t f ‘d ’

f ‘ ;’9 avoids misidentification of ordinary citizens for an , or forestalls the

8 The fact is that, regardless of the methodological process of coding time, each language has

a different structure and a different process of coding time. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics,

Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and others are cultures with scribal methods of

knowledge preservation, but their conceptions of time are differently presented in their

languages and textual medium. The epistemological defects of one scribal medium does not

necessarily apply to the others a priori. This is the same with societies that utilize oral means

of knowledge preservation. The defects of one cannot be assumed to hold for all others. 9 This problem occurred during a study of the carvings of sculptor l w f . See



11

channelling of research along unproductive paths. In other words, the deployment

of the Western artistic paradigm in apprehending Yoruba art completely misses the

specific objective and metaphysical framework that imbues Yoruba artefacts with

meaning and aesthetic logic.

Time, history and the conceptual paradigm

At first reading of Yoruba Art and Language, Ab du ’ gum t m m

as an exhortation of the importance of language learning; but it is far much more.

Abiodun is making as well a deep translational argument about the non-equivalence

of Yoruba and Western artistic schemes. Western aesthetic terminologies and

ontological logic lack the relevant epistemic values to convey the meaning of art

produced in the other-focused Yoruba cultural scheme. The difficulties of such an

intercultural translation is not only that the complexity of Yoruba culture is

obscured, but that it limits Western understanding of Yoruba art, leading to much

misunderstandings. The problem here is that the Yoruba aesthetic concepts and the

metaphysical configuration that should drive intelligibility and research are

wrongly replaced with cognitive meanings and concerns arising from the entirely

d ff t m d W t t t c f m w k. Ab du ’ t ce that Yoruba

meanings should drive Yoruba art historical studies derives from an unwholesome

array of pseudo-explanations that pervade the field. His insistence is not a matter of

special pleading but a call for compliance with the same disciplinary standards of

scholarship in place for the study of art of Western societies.

I th c d m m t f Ab du ’ gum t, Yoruba Art and Language

operates at a meta-theoretical level of analysis. It aims too to highlight the

methodology of Yoruba intellectual tradition and its mode of knowledge

production. It discloses that the structure of the two produces art objects that are

visual oríkì c c t z d ch. h g th t c c f v

that each visual oríkì t f ct c c t z d ch mb d th cu tu ’

ontology and temporality. For instance, each ère-ìbejì statue or àkó-effigy belongs to a

specific sculptural àṣà or stylistic tradition that continually innovates and extends

the creative range of works in space and time (Yai 1993, 35). Each àṣà embodies ìtàn,

d m c t f h t ‘c t c h t g h ’ (Ib d., 30-1) with three

essential features of historicity: chronology or temporal sequence of events, actors,

and the values the event reflects; territory or geographical centring of traditions and

intellectual heritages of the society; and awareness or illuminative processes that

provoke discourses to aid greater enlightenment (1993). These dynamic qualities of

ìtàn, which all need to come together, speak to an integrated knowledge system with

c w f c t g c d d d t uch t t ’ d t t , t t ’ c g m ,

Abiodun, 295.



12

time and location of creation of works, artistic objective of the works, and public

reception of various types of art works. The existence of this historicity process and

its principles of knowing falsifies Western coloniality assumptions about Africa,

notably that African traditions and culture are static and unchanging, lack

mechanisms for determining historical precision, and are theoretically

inconsequential.

Within the Yoruba intellectual tradition, experts are trained on the processes

of òwe-exemplification, defined by a complex of richly-textured analogical reasoning

and razor-sharp of analysis. As well, they are deeply versed and knowledgeable

about ìtàn of diverse societies. They pull from a plurality of intersecting sources and

traditions to triangulate historical chronology and meaning. -analysis produces

informed understanding of historical events, social values, cultural practices, and

symbolisms of visual oríkì. Abiodun demonstrates this process in his artistic

interpretation of the thirteenth- to fourteenth-c tu ‘ b uf ’ c er bronze face

mask (207-229) excavated in Ìta Yemòó, I -If . For over a century after its

excavation, the Obalufon mask was misrepresented as the face of an , a

representation that Abiodun argues forcefully, violates longstanding Yoruba cultural

logic, specifically, the concept and institution of divine rulership and mode of

revering an , prior to British colonization of the Yoruba. The interpretive error

that began at the very moment of excavation of the If bronzes and terracotta works

has now tt d th t tu f ‘h t c f ct.’

Sidelining Yoruba voices, the colonial excavators immediately pronounced

that Yoruba artists were not the creators of these works, because for them,

naturalism represented the highest form of artistic style, and evidenced an advanced

civilization. Because Africans were represented as an inferior people, they were

therefore portrayed as incapable of producing naturalistic style works of superior

quality. These race-scholars then, inserted imaginary white sculptors into twelfth- to

fifteenth-centuries I -If to take credit for the works. After the racist hypothesis of

imaginary white sculptors was debunked, subsequent generation of Africanist

researchers continue to deploy their own European or American cultural practices

and social norms to explain the artistic objectives of these works. This strategy of

supplanting I -If Y ub th t c w th th W t cu d th th t c

and academic basis for claiming that these terracotta and bronze heads must be

t t f ‘k g ’ ( c). Th , tw th t d g th t ‘ ’ g d -neutral term,

and conceptually is radically different from the European conception of rulership as

m d k g (218; ĕwùmí 1997, ch3). v th , Af c t t

researchers have further buttressed these misrepresentations by claiming that the

economic conditions of the time and the considerable cost associated with procuring

copper and fabricating the bronze face masks and heads justified their claims. With

Yoruba voices completely silenced, Africanists have continued to insist that the

h d t d th th th m t w fu ‘m ’ ( c) tw fth-fifteenth-



13

centuries Ilé-If c t , th d v v g .

But as Abiodun demonstrates in chapters 1, 4 and 7, that supposition is

patently wrong. This is because Yoruba visual oríkì is not an artform in the Western

sense, and these visual oríkì follow a logic that is different from the Western one. The

supposition about the identity of the heads represents one of the many errant

Eurocentric projections onto Yoruba society of the social, political, religious, and

moral values of an European social system. The fact that Western rulers assert

majesty and power through portraiture does not mean the same is true for the

Yoruba . Genuine cross-cultural understanding means understanding Yoruba

culture, art and aesthetics on its own value scheme. The Yoruba system of

knowledge provides tools for simultaneously unraveling the abstract idea

encapsulated in visual oríkì by means of òwe (figures of speech), and by utilizing ojú

inú (insight) to prod thinkers into seeing that the sculptures or visual oríkì are

‘c c t z d ch’ ‘h ’ ( ) f d c u k w dg .’ Th c

be conceptualized as philosophical treatises in condensed form, requiring analysis

to fully unravel their meaning. Only the Yoruba intellectual framework is vital in

unleashing the artistic meanings and interpretations of these òwe-forms or visual

objects.

The illuminative processes of ìtàn ignites the kind of interrogation necessary

for unveiling the different layers of encoded meanings. Once òwe-analysis is

unleashed, it highlights the social fact that Yoruba divine sovereigns do not flaunt

power, because they are not crowned they undergo deification. Upon the

completion of this deification process, they automatically lose their personhood as

they become an . The dissolution of personhood is essential in becoming alàṣ

(one filled with àṣ or energy) that transforms the being into a divine sovereign or

(one who ranks with the ). As divine sovereign, the projects the

dreaded essence of intangibility and aura of spirituality emphasized through

concealment. Before colonial rule, the awesome orí-òde v g f w

v d , wh ch m t th t, c t t Af c t h t c um t ,

th t th- t f u t th-c tu f c m k c u d t h v b th f c f .

The epistemic cost of speculative historiography in Yoruba and African art

studies is immense. It leads Africanist and African art researchers astray and

prevents them from apprehending historical frames of temporality and grasping

t th t c m g . Ab du ’ b k t d m t t th

intimate connections between language, philosophy, art, history, and deliberative

analysis; even as disciplinary art historical investment in hegemony prevents some

Africanist and some African art historians from fully appreciating this point. This is

why Abiodun anchored his book on Yoruba intellectual tradition rather than the ill-

suited Western intellectual scheme. This anchoring enabled him to easily and

accurately call on the history of I -If , th h t f Y ub c mmu t , th

t h t If , and the relationships of If ’ g d t t c t d t t



14

neighboring communities. Olabiyi Babalola Yai, a leading Yoruba cultural scholar,

m k th c g t t th t h t c d t g c ‘I -If was…a sanctuary

d th u v t c c ’ of the Yoruba (1993, 31). This premier status of If

in religion and education also extends to artistic production, which in turn derives

from the correlative status of I -If t , and from the centrality of the concept

and divinity of Orí as crucial for human existence. In fact, I -If ’ role as a vaunted

centre of knowledge and of the naturalistic style of artistic creation is one of its

ancient hallmarks.10 h t c u t th t g u f m g t d t w

from If in 1100 AD. Awareness of this historical account probably led Frank Willett

to surmise rightly that an artistic tradition united I -If d b w , ,

j b , and other distant but culturally connected communities of Benin and Onitsha

(184). The àṣà of orí-òde (outer heads) fabrication associated with àkó-effigies but

given full articulation by the concept and divinity of Orí at the center f I -If

religion, best holds the key to the meaning of the bronze and terracotta heads of I -

If th th Eu monarchical practices.

For Yoruba intellectuals, as should be the case for all scholars of Yoruba

studies, cultural fluency is absolutely necessary. Fluency is marked by knowledge of

Yoruba values, ideas, and histories including regional histories, histories of

settlements and communities, sovereign list of and , lineage and family

histories, and the knowledge of social practices and stylistic traditions of diverse

regions of Yorubaland. This history accounts for over seven-hundred-year-old

community relations between I -If d w .11 Even befo th c v t w

of If -type terracotta heads (orí-òde), the connection and exchange of ideas between

the two communities was very well known. This relationship goes back to the

twelfth century, if not before, and testifies to the centrality of I -If in Yoruba

culture and life. Instructively, the climate of the age fostered regional exchanges of

ideas, experiences, and material culture. The bronze and terracotta heads or visual

oríkì rested on, and accorded with the philosophical concept and of c f í

t th h t f Y ub g . Th c c t f í í-I ( tu h d)

c t t t c u t t th Y ub th , í-I í th g t ,

‘th m t m t t in òrun, th th w d’ (32). í-I , d ct d

b t ct c b í wh th m h tu t , is expressively contained

in, and represented by Orí-Òde (the outer physical head). In creative expression,

Orí, a combination of the outer and inner heads, is represented by wood, terracotta,

10 In fact, the legacy of ancient Benin bronze making has been attributed to the knowledge

that came from I -If . 11 h t t c th g f w b ck t If . w , just like Oyo, was founded by one

of the sons of Oduduwa, the founder of Ilé-If . According to this history too, a group of

m g t d t w f m Ilé-If 1100 A . Ev d c f th m g t d t h

v d t th t f w . Early art-historical works dating back to the fifteenth century –

notably terracotta heads in the If style – establish this link.



15

or bronze visual oríkì.

Ab du ’ g u db k g tud f Y ub th t c v th t f m ancient

times, an Odù-Ifá shows that Orí occupied supreme importance in I -If , where it

was conceptualized as the creator of being, the Òr (Supreme Being) who can

change being, but nothing can change it (37). Personal shrines to Orí are

indispensable to devotes for propitiating their ori (head) that is linked to the

divinity, and for charting a successful life. Elaborate burial rites were created for Orí

devotes, their relations, and well-wishers that included parading the deceased

c u d th t w t f m th ub c d th í th t th w h ‘ t’

(37). This ancient practice of public parade evolved, resulting in the substitution of

effigies for corpses, given that sometimes corpses were unavailable for a variety of

reasons.12 In cases of such unavailability, a family would commission an effigy to

u th f m c f v t c m w f d t ‘àkó’ w . In

Y ub gu g , ‘àkó’ ‘ìkó’ c mm m ‘c b t f m t t

cc ’ (170). F th fu àkó-ceremony, special attention was devoted to the

fabrication of the orí-òde of the effigy. Because resemblance to the deceased was

essential, the creators and the family opted for a naturalistic or mimetic style of

rendition.

Familiarity with Yoruba history and adherence to -logic of analysis

disentangles why naturalism is important and what it means to makers and users of

àkó visual oríkì. The Àkó ceremony of w t c t t t th c t í

religious practice of marking individuality and celebrating the essence of

personhood of a departed individual.13 The excavation of fourteenth- to fifteenth-

centuries If -type h d w f f th ct c f Orí and the shared

connection between the two communities in the areas of philosophical traditions,

religious consciousness, artistic values, and aesthetic àṣà (tradition). Àkó-graphic àṣà

f If -naturalism is not concerned about the humanistic norms and objectives of

classicism and the neoclassical style, rather it is focused on religio-socio-cultural

values that give intelligibility to Orí. It is significant that both I -If d w t

only shared artistic practices they did so at the same historical period.

Yoruba Art and Language elaborates that whereas artistic practices associated

with the production of the bronze and terracotta orí-òde or visual oríkì disappeared

earlier in I -If ,14 vestiges of it remained w u t th 1970s in the àkó second-

burial effigies, pivotal for the ascension into ancestor-hood of deceased family

elders. Abiodun demonstrates that the orí-òde visual oríkì of the sort discovered in Ìta

12 This occurred if the person died during a long journey or a war and the corpse was

unavailable. 13 It is crucial to note that the àkó ct c t u qu t w d I -If . It h b f u d

th Y ub c t uch d j b , and in northern Yoruba towns prior to the

spread of Islam and the proscription of figurative representation (Abiodun, 184). 14 There is a historical reason for this disappearance, but I will not discuss it here.



16

Yemòó, I -If were not produced in an artistic or social vacuum. They were tied to

the concept of Orí and to meaningful conceptual and religio-social practices. The

morphological and stylistic similarity in modeling and facial expressiveness in w

orí-òde parallels that of I -If d provides further justification for looking to the àṣà

of àkó-graphy for explanation of the meaning of the I -If heads. Historical records

preserved by both community, w families that had performed àkó, and the artistic

tradition itself supports this research path. Collectively, these centers yield historical

information and artistic insight. At the very least, they inform us that wood had not

always been the medium of production of the Àkó effigies of w . Earlier in history,

a clay medium known as àmaj had been used to model faces and limbs but was

later abandoned for wood (186).

Because àkó heads strive for resemblance, the excavated h d f w

reflected the same naturalistic style and exquisite craftsmanship of the I -If h d .

With I -If th g -social cradle of the Yoruba and the place from where the

centrality of Orí in religion and social life. The facial details of orí-òde had to conform

to the artistic canon of , the calm, serene expressions that depicts

immortality, pípé (completeness), and dídán (fine finishing touches). This artistic

c f m t m t t b c u , Ab du , t th ugh ‘ , [that]

orí (head) in its physiological and spiritual sense rules the rest of the body both

liter d m t h c ’ (267).

In sculptural form, portraits in ì are heads of deceased personages

entering immortality upon the performance of their second funeral rites. These

portriats were not created for an , who once deification was complete was no

longer a person, but an (182). Understandably, nonYoruba are oblivious of

this cultural fact, which explains why early European archaeologists and colonial

theorists had assumed that the excavated terracotta and bronze heads belo g d t

t . As earlier noted, by the late twentieth century, this error had acquired

that status of a truism and supplanted the Yoruba artistic-cum-socio-religious

meanings. Nonetheless, cultural validity or theoretical superiority of an

interpretation is not established by how often it is touted, or how loudly it is

repeated. Though Africanist art historians still insist erroneously that these I -If

h d f c m k th h d f c f t , they do so unaware that

these declarations are merely exposing their ignorance, and that their artistic

interpretations are plausible only within an overreaching hegemonic paradigm.

Yoruba ontology and art as oríkì

In this third phase of argument, Abiodun moves to secure his idea by locating the

fundamental differences between Yoruba art and Western art in their respective

ontology and cultural character. Yoruba ontology shapes the conceptual framework

of art and aesthetics, and the otherness goal of creativity, just as the West draws on



17

its conception of art and aesthetics. Artistic interpreters are cognizant of this, and

w d w th c t ’ th t c c w th t c d c

c c t f bj ct’ àṣà (stylistic traditions). The creative logic of Yoruba art

speaks to a fully developed ontological reality that is consistent and coherent, just as

Western art does to its own consistent and coherent ontological scheme. So, when

Ab du t t th t Y ub ‘ t oríkì,’ wh t d th m t g c ? Th

question takes us fully to the third major moment of his argument, the revelation of

the Yoruba aesthetic scheme that fundamentally differs from the modern Western

scheme of art. In the following, the reason for these differences will become clearer.

Modern Western art and aesthetics began in post-medieval Europe in a

world defined by Cartesian logic, later shaped by Newtonian physics, and

subsequently moulded by the philosophical ideology of positivism. Cartesian

reason and rationality created a Manichean dichotomy between mind and matter,

that ultimately mushroomed into a myriad of other binarisms separating nature

from culture, subject from object, public from private, material from immaterial,

physical from metaphysical, and the visible from invisible. These conceptual

fragmentations privileged matter and made physical reality absolute; it became the

sole, exclusive reality. While the reconciliation of these conceptual gaps constitute

the intractable problems of Western philosophy, the privileging of empirical reality

accorded normative explanatory status just to the observable physical world. Time,

in this space-reality was fundamentally linear, composed of discrete parts, moving

away from an event point or the past, and marching resolutely towards the future.

The forward-only movement of time degrades the vitality and power of things,

producing degradation, age, infirmity, and eventually death. The logic of modernity

apprehends space and time as absolute: and so, the past is always prologue, the

future is beyond reach, and the present is always now.

By contrast, reality or space and time for the Yoruba is differently constituted

as established in the first four chapters of the book. Life is dynamic, a matrix of

interconnectivity. Time is relative and illusive. The present and the future are vitally

connected to the past; all are one and the same in àṣ . Anomalies, such as time

folding back or spiraling, is a definitive feature of this reality.15 Departed ancestors

15 Time is apprehended as a cyclical movement, with interminable cycles of coming and

going, highs and lows, births and deaths, and change and renewal. Time is also

apprehended as linear, but this linearity is seen as ephemeral, and subordinate to the macro

cyclical conception of time used to chronicle time. Linear time is a discrete part of cyclical

time. Its effect on human life is aging, a process that is valued as it bespeaks prescience,

farsightedness, and wisdom. In Yoruba conception, time delivers wisdom through longevity.

What an elder apprehends sitting down, is oblivious to a youth even while standing. As Ifa

literature puts it: ‘Th th t d f m th d tu d u ’ (27). The wisdom of the

elders is secured after death for their descendants by a dynamic concept of ancestor-ship.

The otherworld has immense potency and viability. It is a space of enduring consciousness,



18

(and the as well) fold back time, instantaneously cross vast spaces, and

simultaneously remain vitally connected to and working collaboratively with all

their descendants wherever they may be. There is no distant past in which they have

been left behind. This conception of space and time is why ancestors are always

contemporaneous and present, and why art objects are fabricated in pursuit of

communication with the other reality, and to simplify and concretize abstract

concepts and ideas. Because everyday reality is not absolute, understanding life

requires apprehending the totality of existence, which is why departure from

everyday reality is an aesthetic ideal.

Yoruba philosophy construes reality as much more than is visually

apprehended, consisting of outer and inner aspects, and dimensions of time that are

constitutively shaped by àṣ . Properly understood àṣ is life-force or energy. Reality

is constituted by it, and so every form is a manifestation of that energy and

everything is directly or indirectly interlinked. All life forms as àṣ -forms emerge,

evolve, and transform in the dense àṣ -environment or life stream. Due to its

dynamic character no Manichean dichotomies exist. The observable physical realm

of human existence (ayé) and the nonobservable, metaphysical realm of departed

ancestors and the ( ) are interlinked and one. Though the ontological

characteristics of the two realms differ, they are merely different manifestations of

the same thing. Precisely because of the fundamental sameness of all forms of life

and energy, all things are in communication whether or not they know it. People

converse with departed ancestors and the and vice versa.16 The permeability,

fluidity and boundarilessness of àṣ space and time allows the and deceased

ancestors to be anywhere and everywhere, and to project themselves into human

activities through possession, shape manipulation, thought transference, and

dreams. Equally too, humans enter the state of permeability and boundarilessness

after death, but while alive, they can do so through rites and rituals that imbues

them with the essence of intangibility, such as when they become èkejì as do

divine .

Unlike the empiricist philosophy of modern twentieth-century Western art,

Yoruba conception of art and aesthetics encompasses both the physical and

metaphysical realms, presupposing a reality in which the , the ancestors, and

knowledge and awareness. 16 Ancestors come and go, resulting in names such as (mother has returned – ‘ìyá’:

mother, ‘ ’: has come back); or Babátúndé (father has returned – ‘babá’: father, ‘tún’: again,

‘dé’: has returned). Similarly, people know when the are present, particularly during

rituals when devotees become (horse) of a visiting . They also know when children

are sent by the à, u t g m uch g bí (f m g ) bí (f m ).

This mode of knowledge also extends to the fields of health, where maternal health

specialists can ascertain prior to birth which child is Aina (wrapped by the umbilical cord),

and which is Ìgè (descending with the feet).



19

departed beings participate in shaping communication and physical reality as well

as informing theoretical explanations. Hence, art is a conversation between this

world and the otherworld; it is also a mulilogue in which àṣ ‘ v k [ ] th w

and presence of…v tu v th g th t t ’ (55). I c t , th

conversations permit what may be seen as complex entanglements whereby

ancestors and the are drawn into theoretical formulations that appear to

outsiders as religious practices. With the past intertwined with the present and

f h d w g th futu , Ab du c f th t Y ub ‘ t t b u d m t d

b t m c ,’ t ‘ f t g t v ,’ ju t k th cu tu . It ‘ w d t t

cu t c cum t c ,’ d t ‘ w c t m ’ (284). W th àṣ -spatio-

temporal environment, art is more than simply about physical objects. Even the

t t c d m t f f d f u t t d t w d t f t’ k

decorations or beautification. Rather, they are visual concretizations of abstract

d th t th umm ‘ t ct m v c b w f tu t u t

( m w d utt c )’ (68).

In presenting the African in Africa art, Abiodun explains that Yoruba

philosophy of art is a creative philosophy of vocative and evocative forms, with

objects such as àkó-effigies and ère-ìbeji fu ct g c c t z d u c th t

c f f th b t ct d th c k. C t v t d c t v

d t ct v t c v t uch th t v u oríkì (or artistic objects) become

part of dialogues as humans communicate with the otherworld, and otherworld

entities respond in expected symbolic ways.

The basic difference between modern Western art and Yoruba art is that the

former is focused on the physical data of everyday world and experiences. It is

wholly worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. It adheres strictly to

testimonies of observation and experience, and so it is exclusively utilitarian and

pedestrian. Its artistic interest and objective is beauty directed. In so far as this focus

is primarily about aesthetic impact and aesthetic taste, it is limited to the observable

empirical world. Yoruba art and aesthetics inherently problematizes such worldly-

based explanations that do not grasp the profundity of reality, rather pre-emptively

repudiates the expansive àṣ -filled reality in which Yoruba conception of art is

articulated, and that commands an other-directed mode of understanding and

meaningfulness.17 Abiodun asserts that visual oríkì are principally affective (that is,

cause, influence and transform, 5) and evocative (convey strong memories, feelings,

and images, 5). Hence, treating àkó and ère-ìbeji strictly as material objects, and

g th m f m m c ‘f m t, W t -modernist frame of

t t t ,’ u v th g c d bfu c t their full artistic vision.

17 This is why the materially-based Western theories of poststructuralism, sociolinguistics,

materialism, and psychology may lack explanatory power. Their underpinning notions of

the self, human being, human psychology, and art do not quite make sense.



20

Artistic interpretations that severe Yoruba artistic logic and place the objects

in an empty spatial environment clearly do not grasp the artistic rationale or

aesthetic objective of creating. Quite unlike art objects in the modern Western

conceptual space, àkó effigies, communicate to both the living, the , the newly

deceased, and the rest of the ancestors in the beyond. The ère-ìbeji do the same for

the family and community as well as the deceased twin and community in the

afterlife. Both visual oríkì act in accordance to their ìwà (ch ct ): ‘ w ’ w ’ –

rather than beauty. In short, their (beauty) lies in how well they meet their

ct v ch ct , c ud g b g b t ‘c f th u t f th c tors

[ th tw ] th th w d’ (69).

Under the modalities of life in the Yoruba world, products of creative

expression possess lifeforce. As Abiodun contends, each art form cites its

creator/artist, correctly displays its values, honors the values of its àṣà and

intellectual heritages, and provokes discourses that enlighten and generate analyses.

So, when Abiodun asserts that art is oríkì, he is making a powerful statement that

goes beyond the simple idea that an object can both be art and an oríkì. He is

establishing that like verbal oríkì, visual oríkì are visible speech (125), or treatises that

speak to a specific ontological order. Undoubtedly, he is making a more profound

statement about the metaphysical and epistemological configurations of Yoruba art

and aesthetics. He is stating too that visual oríkì can activate and actualize socio-

political and religious experiences in Yoruba society (87). In short, Abiodun is

unveiling a Yoruba conception of art that speaks to the essence of reality.

The logic of the chapters

The preceding explication of Yoruba ontology leads to the central concern of the

section: Why are the chapters organized the way they are? In other words, what is

the logic of arrangement? The question is pertinent because many of the chapters of

the book had previously been published, in some form or another at various

moments in time. But in choosing to bring those works into this book, it is essential

to ascertain why Abiodun choose the present organizational order of the book? In

what way did the order of the book contribute to the important statement he is

making? And, how are the chapters deployed to fundamentally challenge the

Western conception of a beauty-centred notion of creativity?

Before proceeding further, it is important to recall that with the rise of

imperialism from the nineteenth century, the Western intellectual scheme

deliberately misconstrued Africans, and inaccurately represented African tradition

as static, unchanging, and composed of inscrutable backward practices. Equally too,

African art was represented as naïve, simplistic, and unimaginative. Totally robbed

of their rationality, Africans have been denied a conception of art. In the past,

African scholars have rebutted these representations, rather than highlighting that



21

they are not really about Africans and African art as they are proclamations of

Western ignorance. Knowing that hegemony creates conceptual blinkers, a pertinent

qu t h w d Ab du fut c t d t um d ‘k w dg ’ f

Yoruba art?

Ch t 1, ‘ í: N B W th ut th C t f /Her

í’ b g th c c tu b t f th Y ub c c t f t. F t Ab du

expand our conception of space and time to introduce a dynamic notion of art that

connects human creativity to cosmic creation, and cosmic creation to individuation

and individuality. He takes us to the very beginning and source of life, to walk us

through the cosmic template that establishes the Yoruba conception of art and the

principles of artistic innovation and individuality as the basis of Yoruba art.

Abiodun center í, d v t , th ‘ m d d g t ’ th th w d d

‘th c t f and on whose order [these creative forces] were launched into

th v u c t ’ (38). I Y ub t ctu t d t , í mu t u

divinity, an abstract concept/idea, an indispensable force (42), and the principle of

individuation and individuality.18 It is the central feature in the definition of a

person; it depicts the essence and identity of a subject and it is the distinguishing

feature that gives something its distinctness. Because Orí conversely implies

distinctness, otherness, and difference, it secures the principle of originality and

imagination in Yoruba artistic tradition as well as upholds a supreme form of

inventiveness that transcends the logic of three-dimensional reality. Creativity,

under this tenet, establishes a meaningful canon of proportion that defies the logic

of the empirical world, its ordering and reconstitution of reality. Orí (the physical

head and seat of the divinity, Orí) is shared by all living forms. Because it occupies

relational dominance to the rest f th b d , ju t í-I í th g t

does in the universe, it signifies superlative imagination. As the source and

godhead, Orí fortifies the orí of artists, literally bestows them with divine attributes,

and essentially transforms them into God-creators.

With Orí, the principle of individuality grounding artistic insight as well as

the Yoruba conception of art, Chapter 2 – ‘Àṣe: The Empowered Word Must Come

t ,’ d u u d t d g f th c t v c d th c t t f

creativity. It introduces a dimension absent in modern Western art that

positivistically treats artistic objects as static and lifeless. Yoruba philosophy of art

presupposes a context of creativity that animates artistic objects with life. Àṣe, the

life-force or energy that constitutes the physical and metaphysical worlds (87),

evokes the power to bring objects into the cycle of life by summoning into action the

laws of nature. It does so by activating the iconographical symbols on visual oríkì

(art objects) d u h g th m th ugh ch t ‘ ctu z d d ct socio-

political, g u , d t t c c d c ’ (87). Th Y ub

18 d cu th v k , a divination tapper, 45.



22

conceptualization of art is not about powerless, lifeless objects, whose value is

measured by their beauty, or how much they cost. For this reason, terminologies

and theoretical constructs of Western aesthetics are ill-suited for grasping that

through àṣ , human-God-creators create visual oríkì that concretize abstract ideas

make divine and human experiences possible (57). Artistic forms encapsulate àṣ

that is then activated into action. Because àṣ is affective and triggers responses, the

c f t t c f m, uch Eg g , t m t h c ‘f m’ but

also its àṣ (53). Empowered art objects enter into the stream of life as living forms,

which is why, ère-ìbeji are called children, fed, sang to, carried to market, or danced

with; and àkó effigies are paraded through the town to formally announce the

transitioning of one into an ancestor. With àṣ , Yoruba artworks come alive and

make things happen. Àṣe, the empowered word, speaks objects into life, summons

them to action, and highlights critical interconnection with far greater purpose, than

simply being an object of beautification.

In addition to vitalizing forms, the Yoruba artistic universe is also constituted

by moral and existential objectives that deepen the meaning of life and extends

human capabilities. Western periodization that delineates temporal phases of a

linear conception of time does not conform to the cyclical notion of time marking

Y ub h t d t. Ch t 3, ‘ ṣun: The Corpulent Woman Whose Waist Two

A m C t E c m ,’ t duc u t th d m c f m t w t,

another dimension absent in Western conception of art. ṣun expresses the creative,

gestating, and birthing qualities of mothers and art producers in the cosmos, in life,

d th c t t f t. ‘[ ]h g th m ìwà tútù, ‘c ch ct ,’ w th dùm

(Prime Mover) (118), Abiodun notes that ṣun, the pivotal life-g v g f c (‘ dù

d v d f m h ,’ 118-9) is the principle of actualization and self-actualization.

In her role of actualization, she produces all manners of forms and beings, while in

the role of self-actualization, she conceived and birthed all by herself, the

known as -Túrá or Èṣù gb (118). Th ‘h dd w f w m ,’ th

mothering-creative principle of Yoruba ontology expresses fecundity. It is

exemplified in art by artists creating and actualizing forms of embodiment, grace,

and aesthetic pleasure. Art creation is gestational; it symbolizes the embodiment of

àṣ in the production and multiplication of new forms. Visual oríkì occupies space.

‘F g t k g u c ’ m f c t f ṣun th c f

t . c mm d v th M d gu (Sixteen Cowrie) divination

proclaims her wisdom, knowledge, and power to instantiate unimaginable

possibilities. As a centripetal rather than centrifugal force, ṣun is the catalytic order

that m k th g h (92). h ‘ gu b th m t w fu ’ ft

Olódùmarè (the Prime Mover) (118). In the context of art and aesthetics, creativity

and self-actualization requires wisdom and knowledge. And so like ṣun, artists are

like mothers, producing visual oríkì that extend beyond sculpture, painting,

architecture, Ifá verses, songs, dances, movements, ritual performances, fragrances,



23

natural objects, and food (88-9). Their figures on (Ifá divination tapper), arugbá

(b w f tu g), m k, and others are images of power and reverence.

Ch t 4, ‘ m : Henceforth Ifá t W R d ,’ t

focus on de- dd g, t b w Y ’ h , th m g f th m u t d h -

rider on religious objects in the Ifá divination system. In actuality, however, it is

making a finely-nuanced case for the presence of ì - (change and flexibility)

Y ub t, k w dg , d m t h c t m. Th ‘d - dd g’ c ,

which involves artistic analysis, has as its goal the illumination of the identity of the

horse-rider as well as the articulation of the very artistic principle that Western

intellectual standpoint deems absent in Yoruba art. The principle of ì - is

enunciated through the verbal oríkì correlative of visual oríkì. In the case of agere-Ifá,

a receptacle for ikin (the sixteen sacred divinat m ut th t mb d m

on earth), the verbal oríkì m ’ c m t th t h c f th Ifá priests

will ride horse. The idea of Ifá priests as horse riders establishes two important facts:

a) that at a certain historical point Ifá priests did not ride horses; and b) that not all

equestrian or horse-rider motifs in Yoruba art are royal personages or military

. Th ch t t uct t h w t ‘ d’ v u oríkì, given

that artistic forms and motifs in the artistic tradition are similar. By using context as

the cue to meaningfulness, the horse-rider motifs on the agere-Ifá visual oríkì identify

the rider as Ifá priests. This raises the question of when, and why, horse-riding

became a chosen means of mobility for Ifá priests; a question that is answerable only

by further examination of the history and geography of Yorubaland, and of Ifá

tradition as well. The agere-Ifá (visual oríkì and its correlative verbal oríkì) ‘ t’

dense philosophical evocations or treat f m ’ w d qu t

(130), but h t c ‘t t ’ f th th d d f th t b c m

m k b ucc fu f m th v t th c tu w d. Th ‘t t ’ v

that Ifá priests as intellectuals ride in pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and

understanding (130), covering vast territories in the course of their professional

work, and battling forces that undermine existential well-being.19 But carefully

d g th ‘t t ’ g t th b ckd f Y ub c , h t c and cultural data

v wh th th c . Ab du ’ th ch t fu th d m t t

that the acquisition of knowledge necessary for the art historical explanation of

w k qu ‘ ght t th Y ub m t h c t m, m th , d lore and

into how these affect…th h c m’ (140). or art experts who engage in

artistic analysis and evaluation have to command knowledge of the culture as well

19 Critical understanding of relevant sections of the Odù-Ifá and knowledge of the necessary

symbols of Ifá priesthood – (horsetail flywhisk), abetíajá (cap), beads, etc., – allows the

informed interpreter to identify these horse riders as Ifá priests. The accompanying verbal

oríkì that accompanies the agere-Ifá (visual oríkì) together with Ifá verses unlock the Yoruba

ontological and metaphysical systems.



24

as understand how òwe (‘th h f d c u ,’ 140) d k w dg .

Due to its metaphysical orientation, Yoruba conception of art is engaged in

m tt f t c . Ch t 5, ‘W G t Aṣ b f W G t It W ,’ t

that existential well-being is complicated; all is not as it seems. Existence unfolds an

integrated world in which the art/non-art distinction is dissolved, and in which

aesthetics extends to cloth, dance, movement, and movement or affective/royalty

swagger. Aṣ , signifies cloth the apparel that humans wear, the form that encases

Orí, and the b d ‘garme t’ th t th mb d d àṣ wear. It is also the symbols –

fauna and flora – of murals, the metaphorical cloth that shrines wear. As textile

cloaks nakedness so too does the head and body cover orí and embodied àṣ . Dance

performances or motional oríkì showcase valuable cloths and valued bodies,

concentrating attention on the rhythm of bodies enwrapped in layers of cloth. The

integration of multiple aesthetic forms depends on and creates a communicative

integrated aesthetics. Dance, drama, songs, chant and poetry transforms dress into

visual oríkì as the body-in-motion vibrates to drumbeats that speak a language older

than time. Gbáriy - - – ‘th g m t w th tw hu d d gu t ’ f d

swirls flamboyantly into magnificent shapes (143) dissecting the air and awakening

embodied memories as the body sculpts out the dance. The visual oríkì that is aṣ is

multivalent, encompassing everything one wears—beads, crowns, filà (caps), gèlè

(head ties), shoes, fly whisk and more. Adornment alights and vivifies the body,

d t g th b d ’ ìwà d th d ’ - (design consciousness). In short,

aṣ is communicative, transfo m t v , d g t v . It ‘b dc t ’ d t t

through ideographic shapes, and demands cultural-fluency in apprehending the

disseminated ideas necessary for artistic interpretations. We see this regenerative

transformative meanings in the late thirteenth to early fifteenth century bronze

cu tu f t k d m /f m f gu ( t 68. ‘F gu f k g,’ 147)

really Ògbóni figures, not a royal couple.

The first stages of body transformation signals death, and subsequently

raising the issue of the immortality of elders. Chapter 6 (Àkó: Re/Minding Is the

A t d t f F g tfu ’) dd th m t c f c t d th f

remembrance in guaranteeing immortality. The dynamic interaction of

remembrance and forgetfulness establishes the need to pursue the stylistics of

naturalism in art. Resemblance is essential in remembering, in turn, it becomes a

platform for the conceptualization of immortality of departed family members and

extending the world of the ancestors. Africanists have long misrepresented African

artists as incapable of realistic representation and Africa as devoid of naturalism.

But the conception and production of àkó eff g , ct c t c w for

well over six-hundred years (184) and in Ilé-If for over nine-hundred years,

establishes that African carvers and sculptors were indeed familiar with, and skilled

in realistic representation. The rational of àkó-effigy creation provides justification

for capturing physical likeness, bodily traits, character, and social status in a



25

figurative sculpture. Since àkó aesthetics is focused on the concept of Orí, and the

journey of venerable family members toward becoming ancestors, sculptors have to

meet clients exacting demands for close facial resemblance. With the face as a focal

point of communication, àkó-effigies provide the last occasion for public

engagement with the deceased, and for the family celebration of the entry of a new

ancestor into the after-life. Although, the effigy is merely a visual aid, it is accurately

carved (wood) or modelled (with àmaj clay) to resemble the deceased who is

‘ w k d’ w th f m oríkì, and enjoined to watch over the family upon entering

immortality (196). Remembrance is a crucial feature of immortality. Àkó-effigies

must exude controlled calm, authoritative presence, open eyes, and a

frontal posture of otherworldliness that speak to immortality. Àkó-effigies veer

t w d m (183) b c u th t th ‘f c f th d c d

physical, recognizably naturalistic form (197). Sculptures that do not meet the

exacting demand of resemblance are rejected, even though sculptors are expected to

edit out physical defects while preserving certain idiosyncratic traits that

distinguish the deceased.

Verisimilitude in art opens up a discussion of a vari t f tu t c t

d t d t th t c t I -If . Ch t 7 (I -If : Th c Wh th

w ) m th t t c d m th t Ab du f t If -naturalism

– àkó-graphic àṣà, àṣ -graphic àṣà, and èpè-graphic àṣà. The artistic bj ct v f

Y ub If -naturalism differ from the Western one. Centring the Yoruba aesthetic

scheme reveals that though àkó-graphic àṣà duc ‘th most positive and often

flattering’ m g f d c d (Ab du ’ m h , 226), t is never done for an

wh d c t d v h d d t f m h h t .

The Yoruba intellectual tradition also goes further to provide historical insight on

the owners of some of those heads, in the process unveiling th tu d ch ct

f c t c t f I -If . First, it reveals that the striation marks running down the

faces are not Yoruba facial marks as early theorists and some Africanists have all too

readily assumed. Second, it presents a cosmopolitan picture of ancient If , w th

d t f th th c t , m f wh m h d m f c c c t k th t

f Igb N ch f d t (229) d wh m h v b d v t f í d

wh v t d t tu I -If h d c d th m th right to a distinguished

àkó ceremony (229). While the artistic objectives of àkó-graphy reveal this complex

history, that of the second idiom – th ‘h gh ch m t z d d c f gu d’ àṣ -

graphic àṣà – speaks to the beneficent deployment of àṣ (authority or power) to

charge objects into life. Products of àṣ -graphy do not seek to capture nature the way

àkó-graphy does. The schematic shapes, though natural, depart from mimesis. But

schematics is not the objective of the l t t t c d m, th ‘u c mpromisingly

m m t c’ d ‘m t u f tt g m ’ (241) èpè-graphic àṣà. Because its objective

t duc ‘cu ’ m t f , èpè-graphy shares the same principles that govern the

verbal equivalent of curse.



26

So how can the abhorrent be considered art given that art is about beauty and the

beautiful? This question raises two important issues – a) what is art; and b) what is

th t h f b ut t t? Ch t 8, ‘Y ub A th t c : w , w Wh t W

are Searching For, Ìw ’ v d w t this Western-manufactured quandary

by highlighting the key fundamental differences between Yoruba and Western art. A

cu g th m th ugh ut Ab du ’ b k th d th t ìwà, the essential nature

of an object defines its character. Here, he again refocuses attention on Yoruba

philosophy of art, and engages a panoply of necessary artistic terminologies. The

concept ìwà ‘ch ct ’ f c t c m t c Y ub t t t h

to a cluster of aesthetic concepts – (beauty), ojú-inú (insight, 260), -

(design-consciousness, 262), ìlutí (good learner, 271), ì ú- (adaptability and

change, 275), (durability, long lasting, 277), ì (calm and controlled, 265).

Although ìwà seems geared toward ethics and moral issues, it plays a pivotal role in

Yoruba art, given its dialectical relationship to . The relationship of the two

concepts is an ontological one in which existence is necessary for any understanding

and appreciation of art. Precisely stated, the relationship of ìwà (character) to

(beauty) asserts that beauty lies in the expression of the intended character of an

object. In which case, an èpè-graphic object that accords with and fulfills its ìwà is

beautiful. It meets the conditions for appreciation of its , regardless of the fact

that its physical appearance is revolting or terrifying and does not accord with

conventional definitions of beauty. Thus, in Yoruba art and aesthetics, òwe-reasoning

establishes that there is beauty in ugliness. Aesthetic concepts must respond to an

bj ct’ m t t t ìwà as that is the basis for artistic adjudication and

ultimately of aesthetic appreciation. But for this to occur, knowledge, probity, and

prudence are essential in grasping this point, and in apprehending the ‘ w ’ f

t f ct th t duc ‘ w ’ c t v t .

Bringing the discussion to a close, Abiodun returns to the very beginning of

art, originality and individuality to artfully undermine the pervasive, yet wrong-

headed notion that Yoruba art is unchanging, static, devoid of master-artists; and

that unlike Western art, it fails to privilege originality, authenticity, and innovation.

Ch t 9, ‘T m w, T d ’ E d b g,’ m h w Y ub t t

and receptive to change, and incorporate new ideas into their art. They innovate,

‘ g ’ th v t w th d t ct v c v g t , d c t w t t c f m

by adopting new materials, new forms, and fresh ideas. These technical

introductions re-energize and re-engage àṣà (stylistic tradition) and result in the

production of artistic expressions that are fresh and contemporaneous with the

times. Changing styles produce innovation, new norms, and values. Yoruba

aesthetics welcomes multiplicity, multifocality, and change as demonstrated by the

varied manifestations of Èṣù (285), created under the the principle of ì ú-

(adaptability and change). Yoruba artistic tradition continually transforms in light of

contemporary circumstances. Over the course of history, the morphology and



27

stylistics of forms were reshaped as concepts too were reinterpreted in accordance

with the principle of transformation. Change, in Yoruba conceptual scheme, is

exemplified by the ìwà f ù, and four other powerful in the Yoruba panth

– , g , If , d g (289). But, it is worthwhile to underscore that

change and transformation meaningfully occur always within the context or

background of a tradition. In Yoruba art, definitions of style and àṣà (stylistic

tradition) always incorporate the current fashion of the time, and so embody

temporality, stylistic shifts, new forms, and new artistic ideas. Artistic tradition are

always dynamically changing. They are never static as shown by the works of

famed nineteenth-century and and twentieth-century Yoruba sculptors l w f

(d. 1938), , gb í j w , and Lamidi d F k .

In summary, Yoruba Art and Language makes a convincing case that Yoruba

art studies can no longer proceed as it did previously, where Yoruba history and

culture are swept aside and ignored. Yoruba art and aesthetics must engage and be

grounded in it culture, history and language, the exclusion of which

discombobulates the meaning and object of the art. Serious studies must, therefore,

go beyond superficial formalistic analyses that are the result of limited

understanding of the thought and belief-systems of the culture. A paradigm shift is

required for the necessary cultural fluency for understanding and interpretations to

occur.

Conclusion: the take away

Ab du ’ anations in Yoruba Art and Language highlight the theoretical and

philosophical shifts that occur when the Yoruba cultural framework and philosophy

of art occupy the necessary conceptual space. This occupation speaks purposefully,

though implicitly, about the philosophical foundations of the Western conception of

art that for over a century was presented as the absolute form of human creativity.

While art as a genus is universal, its specific manifestations are not. Each culture

produces art in light of their social and cultural sensibilities and concerns. The main

problem is that the Western mode of thought, aesthetics, form and artistic values

were, and are still, globally represented as universal, with the imprimatur that any

deviation from its epistemological and ontological order marks inferiority and sub-

humanity. But as Abiodun clearly demonstrates the meaning and objective of any

artifact resides in a coherent body of knowledge that consists of overlapping,

interpenetrating, interrelated and interdependent fields of knowledge – ontology,

t m g , d th c . Ab du ’ t, wh ch h t t d v h m

each chapter, is that despite the present global dominance of Western languages,

and what some see as immense benefits in theorizing in English or other Western

languages, Yoruba artifacts are not properly explicable with the theoretical

constructs of these languages underpinning modern Western art (56). A lot about



28

those art forms are lost in translation when Yoruba artistic and aesthetic objectives

are supplanted by modern Western artistic norms and sensibilities as the normative

aesthetic order. This routinely happens when an Africanist outsider imperiously

assumes to know without actually knowing the culture.

In challenging hegemony and hegemonic displacements, Yoruba Art and

Language repudiates the idea that the Western artistic and aesthetic vision is the sole,

universal yardstick for all cultures.20 The take away is that the assumed benefits of

privileging Western languages, Western periodizations, and Western artistic values

and criteria evaporate once we fully grasp that the philosophical foundations of

modern Western art are antithetical to Yoruba art and aesthetics. Western languages

not only lack appropriate terminologies, but they resist the Yoruba meanings and

metaphysical assumptions crucial for grasping the aesthetic vision of the works.

Hence, the Yoruba artistic vision, which should drive explanation is illegitimately

devalued, resulting in the retranslation of Yoruba meanings a d ‘w d ,’ t

b w ĕwùmí’ t m, t cc d w th th d f t d um t f

hegemonic Western scheme. It is crucial to state that Abiodun is not claiming that

Africanists cannot understand Yoruba art. What he is asserting is that Yoruba art is

multitextured, multilayered, and multidimensional, and that it must be understood

on its own terms. In offering a synthetic vision of a Yoruba philosophy of art, Yoruba

Art and Language sets in place the necessary framework, ontology and epistemology

of a theory of art that responds to the sociocultural conditions of an African reality.

Nkiru Nzegwu is Professor of Africana Studies at Binghamton University, New

Y k. h h ub h d w d th f c t c Af c w m ’ tud ,

African and African diaspora art, and African philosophy.

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